Jude Bellingham has walked into the new season looking less like a man under pressure and more like one on a mission.
Three league games, three Real Madrid wins, 10 goals scored, two conceded. Bellingham sits at the heart of it: two goals, three assists, and a role that finally looks tailored to the player he became in his explosive first year at the Bernabeu.
Back then, in 2023-24, he was a phenomenon. Twenty-three goals, La Liga and Champions League titles, and a sense that Madrid had found the next great figurehead of their midfield. Then came the grind. A deeper role, a heavier defensive load, and the inevitable toll on a body pushed to its limits.
The shoulder went first, a long-running issue that eventually needed surgery in 2025. The hamstring followed, costing him 10 games in 2026. The numbers dipped, the rhythm stuttered, and his influence faded into patches rather than full performances.
Now he looks whole again. Fit, sharp, and carrying the swagger of a player fresh from a World Cup in which he was one of England’s driving forces, scoring seven goals and adding an assist in eight appearances.
And into that steps Jose Mourinho.
Mourinho’s deal with Bellingham
Back for a second spell, Mourinho has wasted no time reshaping Madrid around his most complete midfielder. His adjustment is simple on paper, but transformative on the pitch: less defending, more damage.
“We've organised the team differently,” he said after the 4-0 win over Malaga. “Bellingham sometimes defended like a second left-back last season. I told him I do not want to see that anymore. I made a deal with him.”
That “deal” has a clear tactical expression. Bellingham now plays as a pure number 10 in a 4-2-3-1, stationed behind Kylian Mbappe and given licence to roam across the front line. No more endless shuttling between his own box and the opposition’s. No more being dragged into traffic zones where his energy gets spent without hurting the opponent.
“For me, this is his position, with his connection with the forwards, he can score goals,” Mourinho said. “He has to play close to the goal. Playing at number six or number eight, we're losing his closeness to the goal. I like this Jude.”
This Jude receives the ball between the lines. He turns, carries, combines. He waits, then bursts into the box with those late runs that defenders hate to track. He doesn’t just link play; he tilts games.
Just as importantly, he chooses when to help deeper and when to stay high.
“I feel more free to decide when to drop back, when to stay up or when to get into the box,” Bellingham told Real Madrid TV. “I think this is the best position for me.”
Pressing high, hurting higher
Mourinho has not removed the defensive responsibilities. He has moved them.
Bellingham still presses, still recovers the ball, still does the ugly work. The difference is where it starts. No longer retreating towards his own penalty area, he now uses that stamina to harass opponents higher up. When Madrid win it back, he is already close to Mbappe and Vinicius Jr, already in the zone where one touch can open up a defence.
It turns him into a bridge and a weapon at the same time. He connects midfield to attack, then becomes a third forward in the next movement.
That is exactly why Mourinho keeps hammering home the idea that this is a collective machine, not a star vehicle.
“The team dynamic is about 11, not 2+9,” he said, a pointed reminder that Mbappe and Vinicius are part of a structure, not above it.
Within that structure, Bellingham’s versatility is gold. He can press, win it back, score, dominate in the air, and carry the ball 30 yards to flip the tempo. Mourinho has called him a “unique and super important player”, and gone as far as suggesting he should be in the Ballon d’Or conversation. Not as a distant outsider, but as someone whose all-round game deserves that level of recognition.
The admiration runs both ways. Bellingham has described working with Mourinho as a “dream”, having previously only met him once before his return to Madrid. The respect is obvious, and so is the clarity: the coach has given him a defined role, and the player has responded with authority.
Echoes of England and Tuchel
Mourinho has also nodded towards Thomas Tuchel’s use of Bellingham at the World Cup as a template. Under Tuchel, England pushed him into advanced areas and let his attacking qualities breathe. The result: seven goals, one assist, and a tournament that underlined just how destructive he can be when he lives near the final third.
That experience has clearly stayed with him. He rejoined Madrid later than many team-mates this summer, with less time to tune into Mourinho’s demands, but you would not know it from the way he has started. The World Cup form has bled straight into club football.
Three games is not a season. Madrid’s 10 goals and three straight wins are only an early sketch of what this team might become once the Champions League kicks in and the calendar tightens. The demands will grow, the scrutiny will sharpen.
Yet the signs are hard to ignore.
Bellingham, whose greatest strength has always been his ability to touch almost every phase of a game, now controls where and how that influence lands. He is no longer chasing every fire. He is lighting them.
After two uneven, injury-hit campaigns that never quite matched the heights of his debut season, he looks liberated.
“I'm having a lot of fun, I'm really enjoying my football, and that's why I'm performing well,” he told club media.
Fun, at this level, is often what separates the very good from the unstoppable. If Mourinho keeps his “deal” and Bellingham keeps this edge, the question won’t be whether he can get back to his best.
It will be how much higher he can go from here.
